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Food you hated as a kid


toymaker
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Finish your plate!  

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  1. 1. When you were a kid and there was something on your plate that you didn't want to eat, how did you get rid of it?

    • Did you feed it to the dog?
    • Did you feed it to some other animal, or a sibling?
    • Did you push it to the edges of your plate, trying to make it look like less?
    • Did you try to stick it underneath the table, planning to come back later and remove it?
    • Did you try to sneak it on to a sibling's plate?
      0
    • Did you take one last giant mouthful, discretely excuse yourself from the table, and spit the whole mess into the toilet?
    • Did you try to bargain?
    • Did you try bribes?
    • Did you refuse and suffer the consequences?
    • Did you throw a fit?
    • Did you eat it and make a scene - gagging, clutching your stomach, moaning, retching, and rolling on the floor?
    • Did you have a more creative solution?


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How did you get rid of food you didn't want to eat?

 

In my house, when I was very small, if a kid refused to finish what was on his plate, my dad would just stand and make a show of removing his belt. That usually worked.

 

However, I guess because I was the youngest, I got away with all kinds of stuff. I would very, very slowly slide down in my chair until I was under the table. I would just sit under the table until the meal was over, and either they didn't notice or didn't care.

Edited by toymaker
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My parents were never big on the "finish what's on your plate" thing, but they wouldn't offer any alternatives, and they figured hunger would be punishment enough. I was required to try things, rather than reject them beforehand. My mom made quiche pretty regularly, knowing my brother and I hated it, but that's what was for supper, so eat it or starve.
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None of those were an option in our house. Eating everything that was given to us was the only way to get away from the table without repercussions.

Same here. No one ever said "I don't like that."

Ever.

I even ate my beets which I eventaullay developed a fondness for as an adult.

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I eat just about everything except cooked peas and liver. We were poor, so we had liver because it was cheap and nutritional - for those that ate it. My mom and sisters loved it, my dad pretended to, and I would try it, gag, and cry. Another dish all of us kids hated was my mom's Stroganoff. We'd refuse to eat, and would all sit and stare at our cold dinner. Once our parents left the table we'd giggle about it.

 

I remember using the "blow my nose" trick a few times. Take a mouthful, store it for a minute, then spit it out into a kleenex while pretending to blow my nose.

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On 10/18/2021 at 3:27 PM, toymaker said:
How did you get rid of food you didn't want to eat?

 

I ate it. I didn't have a choice.

 

Lima beans, peas, kidney beans, eggplant, beets.....  :angry:

Edited by Principled Man
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I eat just about everything except cooked peas and liver. We were poor, so we had liver because it was cheap and nutritional - for those that ate it. My mom and sisters loved it, my dad pretended to, and I would try it, gag, and cry. Another dish all of us kids hated was my mom's Stroganoff. We'd refuse to eat, and would all sit and stare at our cold dinner. Once our parents left the table we'd giggle about it.

 

I remember using the "blow my nose" trick a few times. Take a mouthful, store it for a minute, then spit it out into a kleenex while pretending to blow my nose.

 

My dad was literally the son of a sharecropper and was very poor and we weren't much better. My dad would eat all kinds of things that we would not and the only thing he made us try was beef heart. His family was the "use/eat all parts of the animal".

 

My brother who was about 3-4, got around the "eat everything" once and luckily my dad laughed about it. The only thing my brother had left were peas (the round, green ones) and after several minutes, my dad told him he had five minutes to "clean his plate" or he was getting a whoopin'. Five minutes later my dad went to check and sure enough, the plate was clean because my brother had put the peas in his glass of tea, which was clear and my dad saw them. My dad let him leave the table and he and my mom laughed about that for years.

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Okra and hominy. I ate everything else so parents were fine about it. Also my fat brother loved both so I would eat a third vegetable while he scarfed the gross stuff. Always three veggies on our table.
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We were pretty dirt poor, too. After my mom left my dad, things were pretty rough. She had barely a grade 8 education, and there were not a lot of great jobs available for her. I know she did the best she could on a tight budget. But . . . spaghetti made with cheap tomato soup instead of sauce. Beef dumplings that were just lumps of dough in powdered gravy mix. "Buttered noodles" (which actually weren't too bad). Lots and lots of beans in sauce (which I still can't eat to this day). When I was very young, I'm afraid I wasn't very stoic about such things. To my great shame, I think I probably caused my mother a lot of grief about food. Sorry, Ma. Edited by toymaker
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I am just as fussy an eater now as I was as a kid. It was more of a problem if I ate at a friend`s house and I don`t like eating out, even now.. My Mum wouldn`t inflict on me anything I didn`t like with the exception of "Bubble and Squeak", the most absurdly named and unpleasant tasting meal of all.
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We were pretty dirt poor, too. After my mom left my dad, things were pretty rough. She had barely a grade 8 education, and there were not a lot of great jobs available for her. I know she did the best she could on a tight budget. But . . . spaghetti made with cheap tomato soup instead of sauce. Beef dumplings that were just lumps of dough in powdered gravy mix. "Buttered noodles" (which actually weren't too bad). Lots and lots of beans in sauce (which I still can't eat to this day). When I was very young, I'm afraid I wasn't very stoic about such things. To my great shame, I think I probably caused my mother a lot of grief about food. Sorry, Ma.

Sounds similar. I remember nights of bread with powdered gravy, spaghetti with awful tomato sauce (ketchup and water), etc. Lots of dented cans in the cupboard, too.
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Chipped beef and liver were the worst. I could usually wait my parents out, though sometimes they'd try guilt trips by talking about all the starving children in China. But we got the New York Times at school so I knew for sure that wasn't true.
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My mother was, and still is, a good cook. Due to financial problems we didn't have too much to spend on food, but Mom could really make the best of it. She used to bake bread in a masonry oven and for most of the time cooked everything from scratch, often using home-grown root vegetables. We ate a lot of potatoes prepared in various ways, and a plenty of fish. And we used to (and still do) pick berries and mushrooms in the surrounding forests. A family friend who used to participate in elk hunting every autumn used to give us meat. It was really delicious after hours and hours of slow cooking in the masonry oven.

 

As a kid we were obliged to have a taste of everything but there was no punishment if something was not to our taste. The "don't leave food to your plate" was still the norm. So, I remember trying to drop some food under the table in hopes that our dog would eat it.

 

First of all, it was mushrooms. I just couldn't - and still can't - eat them in any form. Not in soups, salads, pies, sauces. Nowhere. The basic structure of any mushroom is slimy no matter if you're a top chef or not, and the taste doesn't invite me, either. I love picking mushrooms in the forest, especially the yellowfoot, but that's it. No mushrooms on my plate, thank you.

 

The other food that I still can't eat is liver casserole (made of rice porridge, ground liver, butter, syrup, egg, onion, and raisins). I've never understood why a great tasting rice pudding has to be spoiled with liver and raisins. Luckily my Mum made liver casserole only occasionally, but it was served in our (free of charge) school lunches at least once a month throughout the whole twelve years in school. I used to take a spoonful of the food and mix it with ten spoonfuls of lingonberry jam, and the rest of the lunch consisted of crisp bread.

 

I DID taste the butchery soup Mum made after our only pig was slaughtered. The soup was one of those "never waste a part of an animal" type of foods already mentioned in this discussion. But it was a sheep farm I grew up on, and most of the animals were sent to a slaughterhouse, so it was a rare occation that an animal was slaughtered on the farm. I still remember the strong scent of that butchery soup, however, and it was not so very tempting to me. (I later heard that in our village there was an old lady who loved this soup and used to "just accidentally" stop by when she heard of an animal having been slaughtered somewhere.)

 

What I didn't taste, however, was a cooked elk tongue. The result might have been very tasty, like a pâté, but witnessing the big, gray, frozen tongue boiling in the water was enough for me.

Edited by Sun & Moon
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A combination of eat it and bear it, whining and outright refusal. It was tough, as I was the youngest of 3 siblings, and my sisters were slightly more compliant.

It also depended on who cooked. Mom was a good cook, but it became limited when she began workng as a Registered Nurse on an "afternoon" shift (3:00-11:30 pm). Whatever cooking skills my father had must have been from the Army-stews, soups, and the dreaded S.o.a.S. Dad had a bad habit of the over use of salt, pepper, and onions, which, along with most vegetables, I hated-beans, peas, spinach, and (gag), asparagus.

Once I became older, and learned to cook, I would modify his "recepies" with ingredients that were better fitting to the particular dish. Towards the twilight and end of his days, we shined as a cooking team, particularly during the Christmas holidays with our traditional winners-3, or 4, different types of homemade cookies, and our scratch homemade fresh kielbasa.

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I only hated and gagged with one dish (my mom was an excellent Italian cook) - beef stew. Just the word "stew" made me recoil! Now of course I LOVE beef stew. Looking back I think I had a bad experience because the meat she used for stew was a little fatty, and the wee bit of fat and gristle grossed me out.
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I only hated and gagged with one dish (my mom was an excellent Italian cook) - beef stew. Just the word "stew" made me recoil! Now of course I LOVE beef stew. Looking back I think I had a bad experience because the meat she used for stew was a little fatty, and the wee bit of fat and gristle grossed me out.

I hope you didn't see 'Ravenous' on top of that. :unsure:
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We were pretty dirt poor, too. After my mom left my dad, things were pretty rough. She had barely a grade 8 education, and there were not a lot of great jobs available for her. I know she did the best she could on a tight budget. But . . . spaghetti made with cheap tomato soup instead of sauce. Beef dumplings that were just lumps of dough in powdered gravy mix. "Buttered noodles" (which actually weren't too bad). Lots and lots of beans in sauce (which I still can't eat to this day). When I was very young, I'm afraid I wasn't very stoic about such things. To my great shame, I think I probably caused my mother a lot of grief about food. Sorry, Ma.

She did the best she could. Imagine how bad she felt. I think she was pretty inventive. I went to grammar school with a girl whose mother worked at the Mueller's Egg Noodles plant and her father at the railroad, He was an alcoholic who spent his pay check at the bar and pulled the phone out of the wall on occasion necessitating my 10 year old friend walking with her mother through the snow to the police station to report him. He was a beater too. think she hated him the rest of her life.

 

Anyway, she was the cook, and everyday this ten year old would cook for her five younger brothers and sisters Mueller Egg Noodles or Mac and Cheese.

 

She hated her father so much that when I went up to her house one day, she completely ignored him and never introduced us. Me, I came from a Father Knows Best Family, so it kind of unnerved me. We remained good friends for long years after high school graduation. She was the best friend I refer to often that died two days before her 26th birthday and set myself into an alcoholic tailspin for years. I hope she is finally resting in peace. :rose:

Edited by Lorraine
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Yeah - in retrospect - and after reading some of the stories here - I think I had it pretty good.

Me too. Foodwise my childhood was perfect. A lot of warm memories of me and my Mum baking together, and of our family digging up potatoes and picking berries.

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What I didn't taste, however, was a cooked elk tongue. The result might have been very tasty, like a pâté, but witnessing the big, gray, frozen tongue boiling in the water was enough for me.

I remember my mom cooking beef tongue on the stove. A foul sight. I do like the basque tongue stew served at the local basque restaurant. Deliciously flavored and the tongue is very, very tender.
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